Artwork Sourced From Pinterest. Artist: Unknown.
Unsolved Homicide
by Antonio Rocco S. (Rocco Valentini)
No eyes return to the case file.
No hands reach out for new evidence.
What killed the American Dream?
ONE-EIGHT-SEVEN
Once red lights flashed
Across tracks that carried us
Toward new horizons.
Now America’s future rolls away
In foreign boxcars
As politicians punch tickets
Like train conductors;
Their rhetoric roaring like engines,
Shuttling our nation
Down a steel track toward oblivion.
ONE-EIGHT-SEVEN
Once, a single wage
Built a home for many;
Now it hardly shelters one.
A white picket fence
On a suburban lawn
Is now only a curtain pulled tight
In a studio apartment,
Where walls shrink
And dreams downsize.
ONE-EIGHT-SEVEN
Who printed our obituary?
Was our death certificate signed
With the same ink the Fed uses to print money?
ONE-EIGHT-SEVEN
What killed the American Dream?
Footnote: ONE-EIGHT-SEVEN is police code for homicide.